and Thetheru. The ladder swayed beneath their weight but did not break or fall. After what seemed an incredibly long time, they finally came in sight of the bottom.
When they stepped from the ladder, they found themselves on a flagstone floor buried in a thick layer of dust. At Shandiph's suggestion they lit one torch apiece to provide additional light.
They were in an immense chamber of stone; their footsteps echoed from the bare walls, which even the light of torches and lanterns combined revealed only as vague and distant patches amid the all-encompassing darkness. Three of the four stared about in uneasy surprise at the room's extent; Deriam remarked casually, 'I haven't been down here in a long, long time; I'd forgotten just how big it is.'
'Where's the door to the crypts?' Karag asked.
'We are in the crypts, Karag,' Deriam replied. 'This chamber has a dozen doors opening on various rooms and passages.'
'Which way do we go?' Thetheru asked.
'I haven't any idea,' Deriam answered.
Shandiph carefully placed his torch and lantern on the stone floor and fumbled with the pouch on his belt. He brought out a small sphere of yellow glass and held it up to his eye.
After a long moment he said, 'I see nothing.'
'What do we do now?' Thetheru asked.
'Pick a direction at random,' Karag suggested.
Deriam shrugged, and led the party to the wall of the room, choosing his route by walking forward in the direction he happened to be facing.
The wall was bare stone and faintly dusty.
'Now,' Deriam said, 'I propose that we walk along the wall until we find one of the signs Shandiph mentioned.'
No one objected, and the foursome moved along the wall.
Almost immediately, they came to an open doorway; Deriam looked at Shandiph, who shook his head. They moved on.
A second doorway was passed, and a corner of the room. At the third doorway Shandiph asked, 'Does the pentacle above the door mean anything?'
'What pentacle?' Thetheru asked, holding up his lantern. The stone lintel was blank.
'I think we've found it,' Karag replied.
Shandiph lowered the glass from his eye and stared at the lintel in puzzlement. 'I still see the pentacle, though,' he said. 'Don't you see it?'
'There is nothing there, Shandiph,' Karag replied.
'We see nothing but bare stone,' Deriam added.
Shandiph looked at the glass, then back at the stone. 'I thought I had to look through it,' he said. 'It appears I was wrong.' With a shrug, he led the way through the door and into the passage beyond.
The passage was more of the dull gray stone, huge blocks of it stacked together without mortar, forming a corridor ten feet wide and twelve feet high. It sloped downward for a hundred yards or so and then ended in a T-shaped intersection. Karag had moved into the lead and now stopped, unsure which way to turn.
'The pentagram is on the left,' Shandiph said as he came up. Karag immediately turned left, and the party advanced.
Following Shandiph's directions, the foursome made their way deeper and deeper into the crypts, through corridors and rooms that ranged from mere cubicles to vast caverns, up and down ramps and stairs, across bridges that spanned seemingly bottomless chasms, and past doors of wood, iron, and brass that stood ajar or were tightly sealed, with no discernable pattern. The first torches burned down to uselessness and were discarded, and the lanterns dimmed and died as they wound onward. There was no light save what they carried, and the only sounds were their own footsteps, their own breath, and occasionally the distant dripping of water. In one room they found a spot where drops of water fell and saw that it ran from the tip of a five-inch stalactite clinging to the low ceiling, to land with the smallest of splashes on a stubby projection from the floor. The chamber they were in was not a natural cave, but man-made; the water came through a crack between the stones of the ceiling.
The second set of torches died, and the third was lit; Deriam began complaining of the stupidity Shandiph had displayed in not bringing food and drink. Karag came to the Chairman's defense, pointing out that he had no way of knowing how long the search would take, while Thetheru remained silent. When Deriam demanded that the Amagite choose a side, he ended the argument by saying, 'I'm too busy trying to remember our route.'
'I hadn't thought of that,' Deriam said after a moment of silence.
'I've been too busy finding our way forward,' Shandiph said.
'Can you lead us back out?' Karag asked.
'I'm not sure,' Thetheru admitted.
'Maybe we should turn back. Do we even know what we're looking for?' Deriam asked. 'How will we know these wonders when we find them? Have they really survived for three hundred years in this damp darkness?'
'Darkness wouldn't hurt anything,' Karag retorted.
'But we don't even know what we're looking for,' Thetheru said.
'I assume that we'll find a few chests somewhere,' Shandiph said, 'and perhaps a shelf of books.'
'I hope so,' Deriam answered.
They were discarding the last of the fourth set of torches when Shandiph, who had moved on ahead while Karag lit the new torch from the stub of his old one, called out, 'I've found something.'
'What is it?' Karag called.
'This door has the pentagram sign on it, and another pentagram inside the first.'
'Is it open?'
'No. It's locked.'
The other three came up to join him and found that the Chairman was standing before a large oaken door bound in rusty iron; he was pulling and pushing at the great iron handle. The door did not move.
'Whatever we're looking for must be in there,' Karag said.
'How do we get in?' Deriam asked.
'Break it down,' Karag suggested.
Shandiph and Deriam looked at each other; Deriam shrugged, 'Let him try; he's the strongest of us.'
The other three stepped back, and Karag took a short run toward the door, slamming his shoulder against it.
Immediately, he was flung back against the far wall of the corridor in a shower of pure white sparks.
He lay stunned on the dusty stone. Thetheru said unnecessarily, 'It must have a warding spell on it.'
'I never saw a ward like that,' Deriam replied. He was blinking, trying to help his eyes readjust to the dim yellow torchlight after the vivid brilliance of the sparks.
Shandiph looked at the door for a moment and then said, 'I suppose they wanted to be sure that no one who just happened along could get in. We are the rightful heirs, though, so there must be some way we can annuli the wards.'
'There was no mention of this in your directions?'
'No. You have to understand, I know very little more than you do. When I became Chairman I was given the seal of office and a box of charms, and taught a spell that would tell me what each charm was for when the need arose; that spell told me that the yellow glass would show me the way through the crypts, but it said nothing of this door.'
'Did you bring the other charms?'
'No. That shouldn't matter, though; I know what almost all of them do. Besides, if one was needed here, the spell should have told me before I left Kholis.'
'Perhaps the spell has become muddled over the years.'
